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The View From Wednesday Morning

Good morning! Although I suspect you stayed up as late as I did hoping for some definitive results and are now furiously mainlining caffeine to avoid the dreaded desk-nap this morning. On to the update!

DEMOCRATS

As of this morning, New Mexico remains a close race for Hillary and Obama—less than 1,000 votes separate them with 92 percent of the votes tallied. New Mexico is a pretty decent reflection, apparently, of the rest of the country, as Obama ended up winning in 13 states and Hillary in 8 but they split the (non-New Mexico) delegates 562 to 582 despite Hillary's wins in delegate-rich New York and California.

Even knowing the results in California, the race for pledged delegates is still incredibly tight—despite widely reported results of Hillary beating Obama in the race for delegates 845-765, that actually includes superdelegates (who can change their minds), where she's currently winning by 87. In terms of delegates won to date, she has 632 to Barack's 626.

What this means is that the primary season for the Democrats—usually more or less over by Super Tuesday—is definitely going to stretch into March and perhaps even beyond as the two main candidates will have to fight for every delegate in states small and big. That fight is going to be rather expensive for both candidates, and Obama is reportedly leading in fundraising at this point.

REPUBLICANS

McCain may be catching all kind of pundit flak this morning for not having won enough last night, but his delegate numbers show that his strategy of focusing on the winner-take-all states has paid off in spades— He took 455 delegates to Romney's 173 and Huckabee's 147. Today's news may be all about how McCain is struggling to make it with Republicans, but, the truth is that he's leading the race for the nomination, which is all that matters.

So, in the end, Super Tuesday wasn't really all that Super for anyone but McCain, and even for him it failed to deliver the mega-decisive victory he yearned for. Since the press likes a story, and a race for the nod is more interesting than a slow march, expect the "Can he really do it?" stories on McCain to continue. In the meantime, it seems increasingly likely that this will be one of the longest competitive Democratic primary seasons on record, which means that it will be crazy expensive and those Obama commercials on CNN in the morning aren't going anywhere any time soon and may even be joined by some Hillary ones. Thank goodness for my mute button.